Theatre and Ghosts

Theatre and Ghosts ... collects much arresting recent scholarship on theatrical ghosts from the eighteenth century onward. ... this collection provides a fresh look at ghostly currents circulating in theatre studies today, and virtually every reader in the field will find something thought-provoking in these pages, as well as a very useful bibliography. (Andrew Sofer, Modern Drama, Vol. 58 (3), 2015) Theatre scholars have been slow to explore the longstanding connections between theatre, ghost and other forms of haunting. This fascinating collection of essays will be hugely welcomed by all students and researchers in the emerging field of spectrality studies. - Gay McAuley, Honorary Professor, Department of Performance Studies, University of Sydney, Australia Through stirring contributions on topics ranging from the intricacies of staging nineteenth-century apparitions and the symbolic memory work performed by the 'pretty ghost' to the luminescent spectacle of the midnight spook show, Theatre and Ghosts probes the enduring yet to date under-illuminated association of performance and spectrality. Reflecting on Anglo-American theatrical ghosts and their many guises, as well as the ghostliness of theatre as a medium, this engaging volume makes a vital contribution to the burgeoning field of spectrality studies. - Esther Peeren, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, co-editor with Maria del Pilar Blanco of The Spectralities Reader (2013).